The USSR.
It was often known that the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1991 after years of internal problems that could no longer be contained. The dissolution was inevitable. The republics demanded independence, the economy was unsustainable, and the political system could not withstand the pressures of the modernizing world.
For decades afterward, the territory that once belonged to the USSR was divided and reorganized into new nations, which sought to reclaim their identities.
However, the return of the Soviet bloc started in the late twenty-first century when several Eastern European and Central Asian states fell into deep economic crises triggered by the collapse of their energy sectors.
The political instability that followed created opportunities for external powers. When the European Federation failed to intervene effectively during the Second Baltic Crisis and later broke apart during the Scandinavian Debt Collapse, a hole opened.
